in between space
by Inverse-chan
Summary: He draws her close to him in an embrace, and as she lays there in his arms, he feels a tug on his heart that has nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with the expiration of time. Oneshot. Minako/Heero


**Series: **Sailor Moon/Gundam Wing

**Title: **in between space  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Pairing/ Characters: **Minako / Heero  
**Word Count: **3898  
**Warning/s: **Endless Waltz, all of Sailor Moon, including the Sailor V arc before the actual series. Hopefully, not too much OOC, though maybe a little on Heero's part.

* * *

He felt as though he were made of air.

He opened his eyes into a world as if out of a dream. The ground beneath him was shimmering, incandescent, constantly shifting like the waves of the ocean, at times a blinding white, at other times a brilliant blue. For all of the perceived motion beneath him, however, he did not feel unstable on his feet. As he looked to the sky, there was a vast emptiness all around him – a boundless white horizon, having neither beginning nor end.

"Hi," a voice said from behind him, and as he spun around, he saw a blur of red and blue and gold. The first things that came into focus were the crimson mask which framed her brilliant eyes, and the crescent moon on her forehead, somehow shining although their surroundings only shed the light of an overcast sky.

She, in part, similarly seemed to drink in his appearance. Eyes picked at him curiously, if subtly. Her face showed slight confusion, as if asking him why he was there.

"My name is Venus," she said, her voice cautious but clear. Assessing, he realized, to judge his worth. "Who are you?"

Looking at her through bangs, now yet again longer than he kept them, he replied in a voice higher than the tenor he had grown into, "Zero One." He didn't know why he had fallen back into the code name he had put behind him; why he hadn't simply given away his name which fell so easily from the lips of the friends he had left behind, apart from the caution that instinctively ran through his nerves as well. There was something about her, in the way that she stood, her easy pose masking the stance of a seasoned fighter, in her mask that hid her appearance from him, and her alias, for 'Venus' could not possibly be a real name, that made him wary of her presence.

She knew, in an instant, that he hid in the same way she did, and she accepted it easily enough.

"Why are you –

– _leaving us?" Duo asked, his eyes accusing Heero of a thousand things he wanted to escape. _

"_There's something I need to fix," he replied simply, expecting the long-suffering sigh that escaped Duo's lips. _

"_We all have regrets, Heero," Duo continued, in a voice hollow and not quite his own. "Sometimes we just have to let them go." _

"_Not like this," Heero replied, his words sounding selfish even to himself, as he turned to leave. _

_Furiously, Duo yanked his sleeve, turning him around. "Look at me Heero. We need you -_

– here?" she asked, and if he took a second too long to answer her, she gave no sign.

"The same reason you're here, if I have to guess," Heero replied, not wanting to give up too much. She laughed at this evasion, her nature making the exchange much more of a game than he would ever view it.

Stepping up to him, her hair flowing behind her in a river of gold, swept by a nonexistent breeze, she looked up into his eyes – the hue and intensity of which perfectly matched her own. "Of course you're here to _fix_ something. I just want to know if it's in the past or in the future," she said, voice too light for a matter so heavy.

"I'm here –

_- to save a child you didn't even know?" Wufei asked, voice layered in too much disbelief for the anger to show. "How will you find her? Barring that," he continued, before Heero could answer, "do you understand what changing the past _means_? It's not as simple as simply correcting a wrong, Heero. You have to understand that even the smallest change could unravel everything. By saving her life, would you be the same person? Would you have the same goals and desires? Would you have cared so much in the then present to make a difference in the now future?"_

_Heero was silent at Wufei's tirade, knowing that his words held the truth that he himself had not worked out. "I don't know how I'm going to do it. I just know that I need - _

– to change the past."

* * *

It was easy to see that he preferred his solitude to her conversation, but Minako knew herself to be too selfish to allow him that. She had been there, in the monochrome world, for longer than she could keep track of; maybe minutes, maybe lifetimes, unable to move on. Ami had told her that there was nothing she could do here to speed up the process – that though it may feel like an eternity while she was there, it was actually faster than the blink of an eye in their reality.

But her consciousness – this consciousness – thrived on the things she hoped to gain.

She had told Zero One that she was there not to change something, but to confirm the future. He had looked confused for a moment, not understanding, perhaps, why she would go through so much trouble simply –

_- to make sure that you're… happy?" Ami asked, voice uncertain at her final conclusion. _

"_That's ridiculous," Rei interjected, her voice harsh. "Venus, you cannot abandon your duties simply because you want to see something that will happen anyways. Do you understand what it would mean?" Rei's voice was unyielding in her fury. Minako noted, detachedly, that it was a miracle that she hadn't started yelling yet. "Venus, we _need_ you here. You're the leader of the Inner Senshi – what do you expect us to do if we're attacked when you're gone?"_

"_There are no threats to Crystal Tokyo at the moment, Mars," Minako replied, voice more clipped than she intended for it to be. "Nor will there be, based on the accounts of Small Lady. Should any small farce," Minako continued, voice now icy, "arise during what is sure to be a short absence on my part, I am sure that you are more than capable of dealing with it." _

_Rei, furious at Minako's words, threw up her hands in frustration at her seeming apathy as she stormed out of the room. Ami looked upon the scene worriedly, for a moment debating whether she should follow the fire priestess in an attempt to calm her down. After a moment, she opted to stay, instead looking at Minako with an expression of pity. _

"_It is hard to believe that it will be worth it, Venus," Ami spoke softly, wary of Minako's cold demeanor, ironically though ice is under her domain. "I understand when it is necessary for us to travel to the past – to change the future. But what can you hope to accomplish by traveling in the future instead, when your aim is only -_

- to discover something that she would anyways, had she waited.

"It was a selfish desire," Minako admits to Zero One, when he asks, surprised more at his curiosity than the question. "I don't hope to change anything; I just want to know how things turn out for me."

"I just want –

_- to see if the curse on her remains effective," Usagi confesses to Mamoru in a moment of silence, words heavy with the insight that she has grown into as a queen. "It is a selfish desire, true, but I will not ask her to stay out of her duty to me." _

"_Her curse, Serenity?" Mamoru asks, blind to Minako's past. _

_From behind a pillar, Minako stiffens, sensitive to every word. She should have known that Usagi would remember, even from ages ago, her teary confession of betrayal and barren love. _

"_Yes," Usagi replies, voice quiet, though devastatingly carried in the bare hall of stone. "Once upon a time, before we knew her, she was cursed to never be able to experience true love, despite being, above the rest of us, the champion of love. By traveling to the future she only hopes to discover that somehow, she has been able to transcend her curse and find a way - _

- to be happy," she admits, softly to a boy she barely knows.

Zero One is silent for a moment after her words, out of apathy to her situation, Minako thinks. She does not expect him to understand, to sympathize – she has only told him because he asked, and she is tired of the silence in this monochrome world.

Then, when she had thought him to have receded into his world of silence once more, he speaks to her the words she has heard so often before, but which still manage to affect her with their meaning.

"You are what determines your future, Venus. Nothing else."

* * *

"_It's not even close to ready for human testing, Heero," Quatre shook his head sadly. "To send you through it is ridiculous." _

"_The tests have had positive results," Heero countered, clinging onto his stubbornness._

_Quatre brushes his hopeful optimism off easily. "I know what the tests have shown, Heero, but that doesn't change the fact that it's _risky_. It's true that when we send something through, there's nothing lost when it comes back. But," Quatre continued, stopping Heero before he could interject, "there are still glitches. Through there is nothing lost, there seems to be extra data – neural passageways that shouldn't exist. By all calculations, such a travel should be instantaneous: moving through the fifth dimension is not just a journey in time, but in space."_

_The confusion on his face was enough of a question for Trowa to speak up, answering what Heero had not voiced. "He means there are extra memories, Heero."_

"_There should be no lapse, Heero," Quatre continued, as Trowa fell into silence once more. "There's no aging seen in the subjects, but there's time passed in the consciousness. We don't know what it means yet – how can you possibly expect us to send you through when we don't even know how to answer such a basic question?" _

_Heero is silent for a moment as he thinks over Quatre's words, more of a plea than a warning. He knows that ultimately, Quatre will not refuse to send him through if he were to push the issue. They all have things they would change in the past, he knows, and Quatre will not stand in the way of his resolution. _

"_How much time is passed in the consciousness?" Heero asks, finally, to be met with a sign reminiscent of Duo's._

"_It depends on the subject," Quatre answers, for the moment, the fight gone out of him. "Sometimes seconds, sometimes centuries. It seems to depend purely on luck." _

"_Where is this time… passed?"_

_Quatre shrugs, "We're not sure. From what we can guess, it's simply an in between space that connects your departure and your goal. It doesn't actually exist, in some senses – it only seems to. Because it takes no time to travel to where you want to go, there is technically, then, no distance to travel. _

"_Some of the scientists think it's simply a creation of the subconscious, to account for the journey."_

"_What do you think it is?" Heero asks, studying Quatre's face carefully. _

_He sighs again, weary. "I think it's just a dream."_

* * *

_Minako stops mid-stride, and turns around suddenly in the seemingly empty garden. She calls out to the night, voice hard as metal. "I know you're there, Jupiter."_

_The green senshi reluctantly slinks out from behind a hedge, and as the shadows recede from Makoto's features as she steps from darkness to moonlight, Minako can make out a frown on her usually smiling face. _

_There is no reason for pretense – Makoto has been caught following her, and Minako knows there is only one thing that could be on her mind. Makoto herself has never been one to blunt her words with greetings, and when she speaks her voice is accusing. _

"_You're leaving."_

_Minako sighs – unwilling to share with Makoto the secret Usagi has already revealed to too many. Instead, she hopes only to reassure. "Technically, I won't be gone for more than five minutes if everything goes to plan."_

"_And how," Makoto clips, voice full ice, "do you expect us to believe that everything will go exactly as you plan it? You aren't," Makoto jabs, venom spurring her to voice hateful words, "exactly known for your successful endeavors, Venus." _

_It takes more effort than it should for Minako to ignore the open insult. She does not need to antagonize the others more – not when she plans to leave as soon as the sun rises. "It will go according to plan, Jupiter," and her voice is a forced dispassionate, "and you will suffer no great loss for lack of my presence for a few moments."_

_Minako turns then, to continue to make her way to Mercury's labs, but stops at the urgency of Makoto's plea. The anxiety and care that Makoto had tried so hard to mask with anger are evident in her face as she cries to Minako, "Wait." Minako only tilts her head in Makoto's direction, afraid now that despite her desperate need to _know_, her love and loyalty to her friends would keep her from taking the risk. _

_But Makoto surprises her, as she sweeps Minako into a one-sided hug. "I just – be careful, Venus." _

_Minako looks up into the face of the moon – now a tiny sliver against the night, tomorrow to be swallowed completely by the darkness. "I will," she promises, with a conviction that she hopes will last. _

* * *

She fiddles with her mask, so familiar and yet, by now, so foreign to her touch. It has been so long since she had really been in this costume instead of her golden one – she has almost forgotten the slightly heavier feel, the flashier colors, the more juvenile design. At least, she thinks, her bow is the same, even if her body is at least ten years younger.

"Zero One," she says, again bored of the silence they have lapsed into, "how old are you really?"

"Twenty-three," he answers without delay – he looks no more than fifteen.

"I'm twenty-four," she offers, with a smile.

He looks at her thoughtfully, and she knows that she appears to him as little more than a child. "Why do we look younger?" he asks.

"Mercury – she's the one who sent me through," Minako replies at the question in his eyes, "tells me that here, we appear as we see ourselves. I'm surprised, really, that I'm back to…" she trails off, "this.

"I didn't realize that despite everything, I'm still just the same as I was when I was twelve." Minako tries to lighten her words with humor, but she lets bitterness leak through. Zero One simply nods.

"I thought I would be different too." He confesses in the face of her honesty.

"I guess," he continues, "this is why we need to do this. This must be –"

"What we need to fix," she finishes for him, and though they are far from knowing the other, in that moment they can understand each other more than they can understand themselves.

"Are all of your people," Heero asks in another moment of silence, "named after planets?"

Venus laughs, the cherry red bow in her head shaking slightly as she does so. "Most of the ones I know are," she responds, "but these are more titles than names. We don't really use our real names anymore."

"Why?"

She leans back, somehow, though there is nothing to lean on. "Our titles are more than just that, I guess. They symbolize a duty. To use our names would be to mock it, in a way. Our duties are larger than just ourselves. Our titles are a constant reminder of our service to our queen."

She gives him a slanted look. "What about you, 'Zero One'?"

"I was in a war," Heero replies, and this is enough of an answer to her.

"I was," she replies to this, though it is not a question, "in many wars."

He nods curtly. "Did you win?"

She laughs again. "I suppose."

He does not question this non-answer – it is similar to the one he would give if she were to ask. "Did they mean anything?"

She looks into the endless distance, her eyes trapped in her memories. "Everything," she answers, in a voice like sand and roses.

As he looks at her, swept up in her conviction, he wishes that his answer were so clear.

* * *

They have grown close to each other, though neither will admit it in so many words. Slowly, they tell the other their stories, and with even more time, names begin to slip. Never their own – only the names of others they had left behind. Ami, Rei, Usagi, Mamoru, Makoto, the tens of others she struggles with revealing. Their titles hang heavily on her tongue, still, and sometimes she has to fight with revealing their real names, their pasts and their souls.

He tells her about the war, about Duo and Quatre, Wufei and Trowa. He tells her about Relena, and for a moment she feels inexplicably jealous, until she realizes that Relena is his Usagi – someone to shield and protect.

They are drawn to each other, for they only have each other in this empty zone, and what they begin to feel is not justified by words like 'love' or 'need'.

It is devotion.

"We must be gods," he professes to her one day, as they watch the sky never-changing.

She looks at him, question in her eyes. "What makes you say that?"

He smiles, as he has grown to do more easily. "We never age, we never eat, we never sleep. Our bodies, in a way, are not our own and therefore not real. They're just a memory of how we wish ourselves to be – of how we are reflected in our own minds. If we tried hard enough, I think we would be able to become any form we could think of. We are, in that way, nothing more than a manifestation of consciousness. If that does not make us gods, than what does?"

She smiles at his logic, infallible, yet she knows it to be wrong. "We are paltry gods indeed if all we can do are exist and put on disguises. No," she disagrees, "I was a god once, before I left. Here, I am just a girl."

He looks at her, she with her sardonic smile, and does what he would not dare in his world, in the past or in the future. He draws her close to him in an embrace, and as she lays there in his arms, he feels a tug on his heart that has nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with the expiration of time. As he looks into her eyes, wide with shock, he knows that she feels it too – that her time in this in between space is also coming to an end.

"My name," he rushes out hurriedly, with an urgency now that he knows she will not last, "is Heero Yuy. What's yours?"

Even as her lips move, he knows it is too late. "Minak-

* * *

She is ripped from him, and she feels the brushing of wings against her face. She falls to the ground in an undignified heap, her mask now askew on her face. She is in a park, she realizes, and as she picks herself up, she realizes that no one has noticed her rude interruption in this time frame.

She is as Ami and Setsuna reassured she would be – a mere spectator in the flow of time, invisible yet seeing, intangible yet feeling.

She hears a voice behind her, _her voice_, and as she turns around she sees herself. Although it is evident that she is older by the light in her eyes, there is little else that has changed about her appearance. She still wears a bow in her hair, just as she still stands in the stance of a warrior. She has aged, but remains dignified. There is a young boy in front of her, head hung low as her future self berates him, _her son, she realizes, _with unruly hair the color of golden wheat. He looks up guiltily, his eyes deep and fathomless, the color of the summer sky.

"How many times have I told you not to run off like that?" her future self says, exasperation evident in her voice. "For heavens sakes, you're old enough to not get into trouble, Heero," and as Minako's eyes widen, there is the sound of wings.

She blinks and falls.

"Venus," Ami's voice reaches her ears, "are you alright?"

Minako opens her eyes, and she is again in Mercury's labs, lying in the same position she was in the moment before she left. She realizes in a split second that it is over, that she has returned. She is no longer trapped in a child's body: instead of wearing the colors of Sailor V, she is now back in her more familiar dress as Eternal Sailor Venus. "How long was I gone, Mercury?" she asks, knowing that she must yet again use the titles which now feel like concrete on her tongue.

"A minute, at the most," Ami fusses over her, checking her vital signs, making sure that she was indeed just as she had left. "Your brain activity skyrocketed," she says after a moment, "and still hasn't calmed down. There seems to be… more. Memories, I guess?" Ami says, more to herself than to Minako.

"It was," Minako replies, voice heavy with loss and relief, "a crossing between worlds."

Though Ami asks, she will say no more.

* * *

A brilliant flash of light and a deafening roar as the bombs he had set detonated – _too early_, he laments. For a moment, he thinks with a dull ache that despite his journey to set things right, he has failed. He has traveled to the past a few seconds too late, and that the little girl and her dog have still died due to his incompetence.

But there is a wailing behind him, as his eyes widen as he sees a familiar little girl, the bow in her head trembling as she cries over the loss of her puppy. She, however, is unscathed, in the arms of a woman who was working hard at calming the crying child.

"Hush, Minako," the woman says, though her voice is also laced with shock and pain. "It'll be alright."

A whirl of wind and as he opens his eyes, he sees Quatre leaning over his form worriedly. "Did you…" he begins, and before he can finish, Heero nods.

There is silence as Heero remembers the time passed that did not exist.

"What was it, then?" Quatre asks, after a moment. "The in between space?"

Heero closes his eyes and sees a whirlwind of color: blues, reds, and golds dancing in his vision. "You were right Quatre," he sighs.

"It was a dream."

* * *

They will come to understand that they will not meet again. That their time in the in between space, though it did not technically exist, was beyond doubt very real. That sometimes, there is nothing they can do to change the future or the past and that, really, their place is in the present as it always was.

They will come to understand that they are mortals who once tried to play at god.

Fin

* * *

AN: This was a story that took days to imagine, and much less time to actually write. I was, nevertheless, wary of actually writing the story – the ideas behind it seemed too large to capture in words.

I still don't think I do these two justice, but I don't think I can add more to the story without taking from it. I wanted, above all, for them to meet without losing their identities, which is so hard to avoid in a crossover of any sort.

This story shows, in many ways, a progression. Just as they are traveling through time and space, the story changes through their thoughts and tenses. All in all, there wasn't a lot of romance between the two in my depiction, but to give them more would be to take away from their characterization.

I did not believe that Pluto would have a problem with Minako traveling through the time frame, as she is going to the future as only a spectator, unable to change or affect anything. Heero's position was a much more precarious one, since his very purpose in traveling was to make a difference – only to find out that he didn't need to.

For me:

Dreaming – a week

Writing – two days

Proofing – one day

For you:

Reviewing – a minute at most


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